To be a fan of The Rock is to frequently suffer. The man has charisma to burn and the camera loves him like Tristan loves Isolde. But to bask in his glow, you have to smell what he's cookin' in junk like "Doom," "Southland Tales" and now "Race to Witch Mountain." I hold out hope that one day he'll deliver on the promise of "The Rundown."

To be fair, "Witch Mountain" is at least junk a 9-year-old might love. It revisits the ideas of the 1970s Disney classics about telekinetic alien kids on the lam on Earth. This time the spooky tweens are picked up by a slumming cab driver (The Rock, sorry, Dwayne Johnson) and run afoul of black helicopters and a space-assassin in a robot costume straight out of "M.A.N.T.I.S."

The movie feels corporate-designed for long life on the small screen. The Rock charms you through the worst of it, but the effects are cheap, the dialogue is about as challenging as a "Hannah Montana" episode, and the pace manages to be both brisk and numbing. In other words, it's totally on par with typical "Disney Sunday Movie" fare. I bet it beats out "Watchmen" at the box office this weekend.